Still Circling, 10 Years After Takeoff

Ten years after officials spent $310 million to unveil a modern John Wayne Airport, its future remains mired in the latest phase of a 25-year battle over whether it will be the only commercial airfield in Orange County.

The uncertainty reigns even as Orange County residents increasingly have said in opinion polls that they would rather cast their lot with the mid-sized airport than have the county build a $2.9-billion counterpart at the closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Newport Beach reluctantly relented to the airport’s growth in a 1985 agreement. County supervisors had promised that within 20 years, there would be a second airport in Orange County.

Now, as traffic at John Wayne approaches a court-ordered limit of 8.4 million passengers a year, nervous airport-area residents are monitoring this weekend’s 10th anniversary festivities with an eye toward 2005, when the passenger cap expires.

“Airport wars are like water wars in California; they last forever,” said David Ellis, a political consultant who has spent 20 years dealing with airport growth issues.

Ten years ago this week, the newly revamped airport was flush with praise and promise. Hundreds of VIPs in black tie and evening gowns wandered through the cavernous terminal, sampling gourmet cuisine amid barrel-vaulted ceilings and German marble floors.

Opening the doors meant the airport could swell immediately from 2.5 million passengers a year to more than 4 million. Gone were the portable trailers, cramped check-in booths and single set of bathrooms. Among other amenities: covered parking, frozen yogurt, McDonald’s.

Though some criticized the new terminal as an overgrown Quonset hut, at 337,000 square feet, it was 12 times the size of the old one. Equipped with fancy new jet ways, it beat the old days, when travelers trudged across an uncovered tarmac to board planes.

For Saturday’s festivities, airport officials passed out luggage tags and “thank you” notes to travelers from Airport Manager Alan Murphy, who 10 years ago was project manager for the airport expansion. A John Wayne look-alike wandered through the terminal for photos.

It hadn’t been an easy birth for the new airport. A flurry of lawsuits led to a torturous compromise that reduced the county’s expansion plan and left all sides dissatisfied.

Next came a three-month delay in opening the terminal, whose original $42-million estimate swelled to $67 million in actual costs.

Overriding all the activity was the sense of a decision delayed: No matter how much was spent and how grand the new “boutique airport” was, it wasn’t expected to handle the county’s needs into the new millennium. That’s when the demand for air travel was expected to burst from the confines of the airport’s 500-acre boundary and single 5,700-foot runway.

“A lot of the controversy surrounding the project was way overstated,” said lobbyist Randy Smith, who helped shepherd the airport project 10 years ago. “I think it’s worked well and things have gone smoothly. It was a good investment in the short term.”

Four years ago, the Board of Supervisors officially designated John Wayne Airport part of a two-airport system, to be joined in 2005 by a new airport at El Toro envisioned to serve 28.8 million passengers a year. John Wayne Airport would stay put, handling about 7 million passengers a year.

Since then, about $40 million in proceeds from John Wayne--earned from landing fees and terminal concessions--has been spent planning the new El Toro airport, whose environmental impact report is about a year away from final approval.

John Wayne Airport continues to be a cash cow for the airlines, despite several years of mergers and retrenchment in the airline industry in the 1990s.

The airport now offers 140 arrivals and 140 departures a day among 10 carriers: Alaska, America West, American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, Southwest, Trans World Airlines, United and USAirways.

The airport’s ability to plow money into El Toro while still paying off its bond obligations early is a testament to its attractiveness.

Long-standing estimates that each flight at John Wayne was worth roughly $1 million a year to the airlines haven’t been disputed.

The latest airline interested in serving John Wayne, Aloha Airlines, said statistics show that Orange County residents are among the busiest travelers in the country.

Ultimately, the fate of the airport is inexorably tied to who wins the debate over El Toro. If there is no new airport, most county, state and federal officials predict that it will be only a matter of time before supervisors turn to John Wayne Airport.

In fact, a backup alternative in the county’s El Toro environmental review contemplates solving the no-new-airport problem by condemning nearly 800 acres around the airport and extending its runway across the San Diego Freeway.

Foes of a new airport, meanwhile, insist that government officials consistently inflate airport demand estimates, currently at nearly 180 million travelers a year in Southern California in the next 20 years. Of that number, about 30 million will come to and from Orange County, estimates show.

Airport foes insist that the real demand figure is much less, and that John Wayne Airport can accommodate a reasonable amount of local airline traffic without the county’s expansion alternative.

In recent months, anti-airport activists have pledged to work with Newport Beach-area groups to keep the county from expanding John Wayne Airport beyond its current size.